Tory MPs turn crackpot and adopt BNP policy on English Parliament – Pride’s Purge
In support of Vox Political‘s article on Cameron’s determination to tie English devolution into handing new powers to Scotland, have a look at Tom Pride’s latest offering:
The biggest supporters of an English parliament used to be the far-right skinheads of the neo-nazi British National Party and the equally crackpot English Democrats.
Here’s a quote taken from a BNP leaflet called ‘The Need For An English Parliament‘:
"Our party believes that England should have its own Parliament. This straightforward constitutional policy motion was debated and passed by a substantial majority at the BNP's Annual Conference in Blackpool last month."
And here’s how crackpot the English Democrats are:
Could this be the worst party political broadcast ever?
But now some Tories – such as Tory MP Graham Brady – are openly calling for exactly the same policy as the BNP and the English Democrats.
For the rest of the article you’ll have to visit Pride’s Purge.
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Lmao, you just can’t beat the TORIES because they beat themselves to be the stupid nasty party BSTARDS.
Quelle surprise?
What nonsense! What absolute nonsense! How dare you, or anyone, assume anybody who supports an English Parliament is just some neo-Nazi skinhead. I support an English parliament, and I am most certainly not of the far right.
I think your stance, much like Tom Pride’s, is sneering, ignorant, and wholly dismissive of people’s very real concerns. How anyone can be so stupid as to believe wanting a fair deal for one’s own country automatically links you to the far-right is beyond me.
Where does it say I’ve assumed anybody who supports an English Parliament is a neo-Nazi skinhead?
I’m quite happy to support devolution of English matters to English regional assemblies – and have said so, in the article referenced in this one.
This article is about Conservative MPs.
So if a certain party supports a policy that makes that policy invalid? You dislike the Tories, and so do I, but as far as the “English question” is concerned the Tories are on the right side of the argument.
And quite frankly, when you say you support English regional assemblies I say that is not your business. The English should decide how their country should be governed, not outside opinion such as yours.
I kindly ask you to keep your nose out of England’s affairs.
The Tories are on the wrong side of the argument because they are trying to tie in English devolution with new powers for Scotland when that was not what was agreed by the unionist parties in their offer to the voters of Scotland.
I am English, by the way. I just live in Wales. And you can keep your personal comments to yourself.
Isn’t it a bit hypocritical for you to be carrying on about the English being the only ones to discuss how their country should be run when this has arisen from a discussion about Scotland?
You state that you are quite happy to support devolution of English matters to English regional assemblies yet the almost identical idea of this being performed at Westminster,rather than saddle the English taxpayer with yet another layer of government,is written off by you as you claim that “Tory MP’s turn crackpot” by adopting this policy.
Why is it “crackpot” to adopt this policy in a straight forward and low cost way that will bring immediate democratic legitimacy to how England is governed?Or is your real beef that you like BIG government,extra layers,more buildings,more politicians,shiny new offices and ever expanding budgets?
As we already have all the English MP’s under one roof why not simply use that opportunity to hold English only sittings at Westminster whenever the need arises,what would be so “crackpot” about doing something worthwhile that is also blindingly obvious and cheap?
Having it at Westminster absolutely is a crackpot idea.
People are elected into a legislature to discuss, debate and vote on all the issues presented there. It would be wrong for anyone to try to prevent a person elected to the UK Parliament from voting on a matter discussed there. If the English want devolution, then they must elect representatives to (in my opinion) regional assemblies. Did you campaign for the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish to bar English MPs from voting in Westminster on devolved issues rather than have their own assemblies? If England is to get its own representatives, then it should have them in the same way as the other countries of the UK – using Westminster MPs would provide no legitimacy at all. It’s simply a Tory device to ensure that England is governed by Conservatives into the foreseeable future, that’s all.
Please explain why it is good for democracy for Scottish MP’s to be allowed to vote on purely English matters when it is not possible for English MP’s to be allowed to vote on purely Scottish matters?
Could your dislike of this change be in any way motivated by the fact that the Labour Party has a long history of using its Scottish MP’s to make up for its lack of English ones so as to ram its often highly damaging legislation through Westminster?
No reasonable argument can be made to support the status quo,it certainly can’t be called democratic,so I can only assume that your reliance upon it being a policy supported by people you call “Neo-Nazi” is a pathetic attempt to make it seem undemocratic.Even a broken clock is accurate twice a day and no matter what you may claim about supporters of this policy being Right Wing on this issue they are RIGHT!
If this change leads to Labour being unable to bulldoze its Socialism down the throats of a English electorate which did not give them a majority mandate then surely that is what democracy is about.In view of how vociferous you are in your support for a status quo which is plainly undemocratic I stand in awe of your nerve at calling those who wish to change it NEO-NAZIS.Surely that description more accurately reflects your own political ideology ,your the one who wants to impose a government on people without a democratic mandate.
I haven’t said anything about whether it is good for democracy for the conditions you describe to continue – but I will say a little about it now. Information has come out to suggest that decisions affecting England, due to its much larger population and the effect those people have on the rest of the UK, are in fact decisions affecting the UK as a whole. Therefore it would be appropriate for MPs from Scotland, Wales and Ireland to have a say in them; their countries are affected as well. That is an entirely reasonable argument in support of the current situation.
I did not rely on English devolution being a policy supported by neo-Nazis – Tom Pride said these people were its biggest supporters until the Tories jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of hijacking control of England into the far future.
Your speculation about Labour using Scottish MPs to support legislation is bizarre. All MPs elected to Parliament should be allowed to vote on all issues being debated in Parliament. If the Tories had more MPs in Scotland, they wouldn’t be demanding English devolution now – they’d be using those MPs in exactly the same way that has prompted your criticism of Labour. And, as it happens, when Labour won in 1997, 2001 and 2005, they had enough English MPs to support their policies, so your point falls. Your later point about imposing a government on people without a democratic mandate also falls – it cannot apply to England, but would apply if the Westminster government were trying to impose its will on Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland where the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are currently opposition groups.
Labour is not able to “bulldoze” any kind of socialism onto the English electorate at the moment because we have a Conservative/Liberal Democrat government here in the UK. It’s the Tories and their yellow friends who have been causing all the misery of the last four years or so.
They are trying to tie this into English devolution because it is a consequence of the promise that was made to give Scotland even more powers. There had already been some discontent in some quarters about the current devolution settlement, and now the promised new powers for the Scottish parliament have caused that discontent to reach a tipping point.
I don’t care if you are English or not, you don’t live in England so what happens here is of no concern to you.
No it isn’t hypocritical at all; I am English, live in England, and am reading a mocking, oh-so-clever headline that is, by implication, saying anyone who supports and English parliament is some sort of far-right lunatic – or even a Tory (which I am not).
If it is a consequence of the Scottish promise, then it should be treated as such – a separate issue that arose from the other matter.
I don’t care what you think about where I live. Scotland was of concern to me; England is no different. These matters concern me because we are all citizens of the UK and England especially concerns me because what happens there affects the rest of us no matter what.
As for your ideas about the English Parliament – read my response to Eijnar; I can’t be bothered to type it out again for you, in the light of what you have written here today.
I’ve just spotted this blog entry and thought it is quite appropriate, given the current discussions about the future of the UK…
http://englanddoesntexist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/imagine.html
Please don’t tell us you thought it was serious. No tuition fees? No privatisation of the NHS – considering England is the only part of the UK where private firms have been allowed to mess it up, because it’s the only part that Tories have been running? The only way I could swallow it at all was as a piece highlighting what has gone wrong in England by suggesting the exact opposite. What you see in it could never happen with majority Tory rule.
No, it is a satirical blog, but who was it who pushed through the privatisation of England’s NHS? Labour. Who was it who introduced tuition fees? Labour.
And quite frankly, saying there shouldn’t be an English parliament because that might mean “the Tories might get in” is no argument at all. Just because you (and I) dislike the Tory party that doesn’t mean we should try to Gerrymander the constitution to keep them out. That’s not democracy, and party should never come before country.
I think your head’s come undone.
You think Labour privatised the NHS? Where were you when Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act came into being?
Labour did introduce tuition fees, and that was a terrible mistake forced on us by neoliberals who belonged in the Conservative Party. Labour has changed since then, although clearly some people don’t want to accept that, for reasons of their own.
You are misrepresenting what I said about an English Parliament. Are you aware that the Conservatives don’t want an English Parliament anyway – they want English MPs to decide on those issues, rather than having devolution that puts England on the same footing as the rest of the UK. That’s completely inappropriate.
So we’re going around in circles here it seems.
I do want an English parliament, but EVOEL is the next best thing; it’s certainly better than the current situation which is soon to be made worse once the Scottish parliament gets the powers promised it by the three main party leaders.
But whether it’s an English Parliament or EVOEL there are many in the Labour Party who are opposed either way since they are convinced Labour could never carry a majority of seats in England, even though Labour did just that in 1997, 2001 and 2005. However even if that were true it should not matter; what matters most is a fair deal for England (and Wales and Scotland), not the narrow electoral interests of one political party.
If it’s a fair deal you’re after, then the information that has come out saying that English decisions affect everyone else in the UK anyway must mitigate against any English devolution. England affects the UK in all ways, so it is right that English decisions are made by all of Parliament.
Another alternative seems to have come up in the Labour Conference – devolve powers for affairs that don’t affect the whole of the UK to the English councils. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet, because I haven’t had a chance to get to grips with it. How does it grab you?